Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
Grants
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Our Grantmaking Strategy
For more than 100 years, The Chicago Community Trust has convened, supported, funded, and accelerated the work of community members and changemakers committed to strengthening the Chicago region. From building up our civic infrastructure to spearheading our response to the Great Recession, the Trust has brought our community together to face pressing challenges and seize our greatest opportunities.
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Grant Recipient
Fresh Taste
North Lawndale Fresh is a collaborative grantmaking program to increase access to healthy affordable food, support community gardens and local food production, grow food enterprises, and protect and strengthen food assistance programs in the North Lawndale neighborhood. The vision is an equitable Chicagoland region where all people have knowledge of and access to healthy food. The funders involved with North Lawndale Fresh have committed to a minimum $1M for each of five years to support the neighborhood. This is the first year of that five-year commitment to North Lawndale Fresh. This project aligns with the building supply-side skills and attracting capital strategies of Food:Land:Opportunity while also reducing fragmentation.
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Grant Recipient
MANO A MANO FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER
Mano a Mano is requesting general operations funds in support of overall agency goals to empower our immigrant community to reach their best immigantion status, to have access to health call and education leading them to pursue opportunities and success within an integrated community.
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Grant Recipient
ALL CHICAGO MAKING HOMELESSNESS HISTORY
All Chicago respectfully requests $150,000 in support of a reconstituted, flexible, Chicago COVID-19 Homeless System Agency Emergency Fund. All Chicago is partnering with Chicago Funders Together to End Homelessness to reactivate this fund, which in 2020 provided $768,292 in emergency assistance to thirty-seven of All Chicago’s partner agencies. Support will focus on immediate and unanticipated needs brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of the Omicron wave and its impact on people experiencing homelessness—and the staff and systems that support them—All Chicago seeks support to offer a second round of flexible, unrestricted funds to agencies in 2022. Flexible funding via the Agency Emergency Fund can support costs related to staff retention, recruitment, well-being needs for staff, temporary housing, outreach, transportation, food, supplies, facility modification or expansion, technology, staffing, or other demonstrated costs related to the pandemic. Anticipated awards will range between $10,000 to $15,000, from a pool expected to be in excess of $800,000.00 Applicant organizations for Agency Emergency Fund support will initially include approximately forty core service providers who receive funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, under the Continuum of Care (CoC) program. With sufficient support, All Chicago will extend this invitation to shelter providers and other homelessness service agencies that are closely connected with these core service providers. Agencies will be invited to complete a brief online application with a few questions to minimize barriers to accessing dollars. The timeframe for spending the collective funding received will be determined by the amounts awarded by private philanthropy and the number of applications submitted. All Chicago will issue an initial round of provider payments within three weeks of the invitation to providers and will make additional rolling payments as additional funding is received and the invitation network is broadened. Rolling payments will continue until all funds are exhausted. All Chicago's partners have been extraordinarily responsive and resilient in their support of people experiencing homelessness during the last two years, and they are continually faced with unanticipated challenges. In the early days of the pandemic, the Agency Emergency Fund provided crucial support for agencies. Leading the reactivation of the Agency Emergency Fund are Northern Trust and several other members of Chicago Funders Together to End Homelessness (CFTEH), a local philanthropic collaborative incubated at Michael Reese Health Trust. In a matter of weeks, foundation members of CFTEH which have mobilized resources include: Blowitz-Ridgeway Foundation, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, the Chicago Community COVID-19 Response Fund, Crown Family Philanthropies, Cuore e Mani Foundation, Northern Trust, The Owens Foundation, Pierce Family Foundation and Denis Pierce, Polk Bros. Foundation, Waterton Philanthropic Fund, and an anonymous foundation funder.
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Grant Recipient
Little Black Pearl Workshop
LBP is requesting support for a finish line ready project to upgrade our dated operating systems, build catering/culinary training kitchen, work lounge and customization facilities. We anticipate completion and groundbreaking for the entire project within 12 months.
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Grant Recipient
Advocates for Urban Agriculture NFP
Advocates for Urban Agriculture is requesting continuing support of its technical assistance initiatives that is producing a series of deliverables to help Chicago area growers expand their capacity to produce and distribute locally grown food to impact and strengthen our local food system.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Housing and Health
Funding from the Chicago Community Trust will support the Center for Housing and Health’s (CHH) work to bridge the housing and health care systems to improve the lives of Chicagoans experiencing homelessness. CHH understands that solutions to the pervasive and systemic problem of homelessness can be achieved by working through community coalitions to advocate for structural change and by working in partnerships to advance innovative and unique programmatic approaches. CHH is the administrator of the Chicago and Cook County Flexible Housing Pool (FHP) as well as an active participant in other system-level initiatives designed to improve housing and healthcare access for individuals experiencing homelessness.
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Grant Recipient
Lawndale Christian Health Center
LCHC is requesting funding from CCT to support the ongoing provision of primary care and specialty care services to patients on the West Side of Chicago. These continued services will allow for increased access to communities that experience higher rates of chronic conditions, poor social determinants of health, and face higher barriers to accessing high-quality medical care.
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Grant Recipient
Kids Off The Block, Inc.
Kids off the Block (KOB) was founded in 2003, and is a 501(c)(3) organization. As a community-based organization, KOB is dedicated to affecting positive change for young people and the areas where they live. Our programs serve some of Chicago’s most at-risk youth afterschool, and during the summer months. The organization provides youth services (to include violence prevention services) to those who are between the ages 10-24 with the major goals of helping them to avoid violence, succeed academically, become self-sufficient, and avoid self-defeating behaviors to include gang and gun violence. Last year, KOB served more than 1,850 young people and their families.